Children of Rage
by dionysianDaydream
Summary: The Johto region was flung into chaos when, twenty years ago, a madman's dream turned Pokemon against humans. The Days of Rage, as history would come to know it, forced mankind underground until they were strong enough to make a resurgence, but it is a struggle. Could the key to saving Johto lie in the harsh methods employed by the Johto Defense Army, or is peace possible?
1. Prologue 1: Brutal New World

My name is Gray, and I am a soldier.

As the job description puts it, I am a part of humanity's last stand against the creatures we once called friends - the Pokemon - now just monsters that are to be feared, reviled, and killed if sighted within a mile-far radius of any human populace.

Pretty much.

Thinking back on it now, my first outing with the Johto Defense Army's Goldenrod Unit very nearly could have been my last, but because of one particularly important detail, it would be wrong of me to begin my story anywhere else.

At the time I was still a cadet, and as part of my training a commanding officer was to oversee my unit while on a mission to collect invaluable resources for use back home. It was basic, everyday stuff for a JDA, but it would be our fifth time out on the field so it wasn't such a big deal. I guess.

Strangely enough, there was nothing foreboding or at all auspicious about that day, which I had come to dread in the weeks leading up to it. On the contrary, because civillians are not allowed to leave the cities I was deeply fascinated by the scenery which, before becoming a soldier, I had only caught glimpses of in stories told to me by adults, who once took basic things like freedom and the beauty of nature for granted.

"Crazy how a place like this can be so dangerous," one of my squadmates - Len, the class joker I guess you can call him - commented, and I thought he had a point: the 'fresh' aromas of the forest air; that of ripe berries and rich unfertilized soil far removed from the prevailing stench of Goldenrod City's severe smog, or the gentle sound of a narrow brook rushing over loose pebbles in the distance hardly seemed like the scene of a bloody battle between man and nature.

As usual with these missions, I wanted to doubt the truth of the world, but to do that would be to disregard everything I had been taught growing up.

Before I could get too engrossed in the sights and smells, our field commander suddenly held her hand up, calling for silence as we approached a small clearing.

"Put your visor down, Len, there are targets up ahead. Everyone, stay alert."

Massive and hulking, covered from head to toe in light brown fur but colored white and forming a tight ring at the center of its chest, we encountered an Ursaring that had climbed halfway up a tree to reach for a Combee hive.

"It's hide could be used to make coats for the upcoming winter, but not very good ones if it's all shot up."

After scanning over us for a bit, she signalled me out. I stepped forward with a sigh.

"Yeah?"

She narrowed her eyes at me.

"I mean, yeah ma'am?"

"I hear that you're the best sniper in the unit. If you can take this guy out in one shot I'll believe it."

I wanted to object outright because like any sane person I was not altogether comfortable with having a wild Ursaring be my first live target. However, she was right about me being the best shot in the class, so if anyone was going to do this, it had to be.

"Fine, I'll do it."

The rifle I brought with me is an old piece-of-shit model that I nevertheless swear by because it once belonged to my father, when he was a Sargeant of the Johto Alliance. Holding it brought back memories of when he would take me and my brother to the park and have shoot at tin cans, always from a little farther away than last time.

He would always promise us that one day we would understand why the blisters and ringing ears were worth it. So in a way, whether or not we would become a soldier was never a choice for me and my brother growing up, but holdin his rifle then - aiming it at the head of an enemy - I couldn't bring myself to do it.

"Remember, right between the ears. You've got one try, so make it count."

But what was my justification? It's something that had been weighing on my mind lately.

I had a perfect shot lined up at the back of its skull, but still I hesitated when a pair of Teddiursa rolling around at its feet caught my eye.

_Are they the enemy too? _

I asked if we should eliminate them as well, to which the commander responded by flashing a hand symbol. All tangos, roger. Even the defenseless children.

"On my mark," the commander started to say, but then fate shat all over everything.

"Get it off me! It's clawing at my eyes, get it off!"

To my left Len was suddenly screaming, clawing at a Spinarak that had fallen down from a branch to land squarely unto his unshielded face.

Alerted to the noise, the Ursaring turned its head and glared at me, then let out a roar that rippled through the treetops.

I fired a shot on impulse but it spiralled into mama bear's chest uselessly, only serving to make it angrier.

"What kind of flimsy shot was that, cadet? Are you _trying_ to get us all killed?"

With a scoff the commander punches the Spinarak off of Len, whips out a pistol and shoots it until it's nothing more than a puddle of goo. As for Len, his face was scarred and bloody, the skin around his eyes seared pink from highly concentrated glandular acids.

"My eyes! I can't see anything!"

The commander, unfazed, points forward. "Now we're really up a creek. Everyone, move!"

The Ursaring charged at us, snarling as it flailed its clawed arms with killing intent.

"Everybody move! Split up and fire at it from all sides!"

"But what about Len?" I asked, but it was too late.

She yanked me out of the fuzzy torpedo's way not a second too soon, so close that I felt its warm breath and the displaced air almost knocked me off my feet as it thundered past me.

Being that he was still incapacitated by the Spinarak's attack, Len was not so lucky.

Really, really not so lucky.

The Ursaring slashed him from the shoulder down across his chest, tearing through the armored fabric as if it were made of paper. Then, while sponging the multitude of bullets being fired at it, Ursaring shoved Len with such force that he was sent hurdling into a tree, and to the ground he crumpled as limp as a forgotten marionette.

At that point I lost it, and without thinking joined the others in showering the burly bear's back in bullets.

We all continued firing until our cartridges ran out, so the barrage ended with a series of loud clicks and weighty exhalations, as we waited for the smoke to clear.

The Ursaring, needless to say, was completely dead, as it first fell on one knee then completely collapsed facefirst; the trees nearby decorated with smoldering bulletholes and awash in fresh blood. This was aa abrupt and repulsive departure from the peaceful serenity of before, but at least the two Teddiursa had fled the scene long ago.

_Run, little bears. Run far, far away._

I made a move toward Len, who remained motionless with his head drooping, bleeding out profusely with his back still pinned against a tree.

"Len, are you-"

"Gray, to your left!"

With only a barely audible sliver of a growl for a warning, I felt something heavy clamp unto my arm.

When a Granbull that had snuck up on us during the chaotic battle clenched its jaws around my right forearm and started shaking, I knew that his was a death grip, and no amount of mere struggling would free me. Pretty pathetic.

I watched in horror as strings of my flesh uncoiled and splashes of red colored the writhing Pokemon's face, as its razor sharp teeth pierced my Figy fiber gauntlet with incredible ease.

I cried for help but the rest of the team did nothing, shyly obeying the commander's stern order to lower their rifles.

"Think fast, Private. Like you should have when I told you to take that thing down in one shot," she indicates the bullet-riddled dead Ursaring.

Suddenly it felt like I was being punished. The commander was just a shadow spectating off to the side amidst a sea of standard issue titanium helmets with visors, black fireproof jackets, and triple reinforced Scizorite boots. The makeup of those that were my friends and allies, so long as orders permitted it.

In thinking about the gear we were outfitted with, though, I was reminded of the combat knife tucked in a hilt under the right fold of my jacket.

As my vision was beginning to grow blurry, I made one final grab for it and what happened next took place across several heartbeats, although with the pain and my latent desperation, it seemed to last much longer.

There was the soft _plunk_ of the knife as I plunged it into the Granbull's skull, followed by a surprised yelp right before its life left it, and the frantic air that followed as squadmates rushed to bat it over the head with their shock batons until its jaws finally unhinged. That is, all of them except for the commander, who remained standing at the side watching with her arms crossed, wearing a cold frown.

"Call in a med evac team," her voice echoed, "and two of you stay with him while the rest of us push forward. We're running out of daylight and still have nothing to show for it, people!"

Len was on the ground lying in a puddle of his own blood, and I had little doubt he was dead as a plank even though, I realized, much like this pretty forest, if I'd stayed a civillian I would have never been allowed to witness the aftermath of a monster attack.

Turning my head to assess my own damage, I instantly regretted it. Go figure that seeing my arm reduced to nothing more than a sickeningly shredded, twisted, half-eaten thing failed to raise my spirits.

_Why did I have to question my orders? Because of me, Len is dead..._

As the pair that was left behind laid me down in a tuft of dewy undergrowth and started spraying me down with Super Potions, the entire world began to darken and close in around me.

_Losing blood...too much blood..._

The vile odor of spilled gore overwhelmed me, and so did the surges of pain coming from the phantom remnants of my gnarled limb.

_I should never have become a soldier..._

No amount of medicine could help me now, as I lay there shaking, gasping, pleading internally to an arbitrary higher power that I might see my father, my mother, even my dickhead brother, my _someone_ one last time, but my final wish did not come true.

_Save me, please..._

So it was that I died jaded, impaled with finality by the bitter stinger of divine indifference.

And to think, that was only just the beginning...


	2. Prologue 2: Born Again, Part 1

A Ralts, shivering with cold and alone, was all wrapped up in itself just trying to stay warm through the freezing cold winter by hiding in our attic, behind a stack of boxes.

It must have somehow been seperated from its kind, and because the JDA was a fledgling concept at the time, it probably had no trouble getting past the makeshift barriers that once bordered the city.

I was seven years old at the time, and because I was 'soft', for about a week I would sneak away to the attic just so I could bring it things like blankets, a mug of hot cocoa, and even some toys for us to play with. We were best friends, and it didn't matter that Ralts was a Pokemon and I a human.

However, for all it meant to me, that friendship was woefully short-lived.

One day my brother followed me as I was taking another trip upstairs and Ralts, who had no reason to suspect anything was amiss, jumped out of its hiding place to greet me.

Being that he was older than me and therefore more convinced of the idea that all Pokemon are evil, he of course tattled on me to Sargeant Dad and I never saw that Ralts again.

The memory dissapated and suddenly I was floating, it seemed, in a sparkling light pink- fading to white cosmos.

Faster than I could begin to make sense of it, the air in front of me started to ripple, and I could sense the presence of someone or something emerging into that limitless space.

"What is this place?"

The response was so immediate that it startled me.

"Relax," a female voice said calmly, "you are safer now than one could ever hope to be, for you are within _His_ domain."

So I was safe, huh? Compared to that crazy forest where I had my arm chewed off I thought, most certainly!

_Wait a minute..._

"My arm doesn't hurt anymore," I expressed aloud, and made a motion to wave it around so as to be sure. Much like how it is sometimes when you dream, my mind's eye could not 'visualize' the movements of my arm nor the presence of the entire rest of my body, but still I had a sense that all the working parts were intact. Could it be that all this was just a dream, too?

"I'm not dead, am I?"

The voice laughed playfully, and the rippling intensified.

"Quite the opposite, Gray. You are about to begin an exciting new chapter of _life _graced by His unending love."

"Are you talking about...God?" A subject rarely touched upon in polite company nowadays - considering many old world religions told of Pokemon being the center of creation - but what else could she be referring to? And what did she mean by a 'new chapter of life'?

There were so many questions swirling around in my head, and that was even before learning the soothing voice's identity.

"All your questions will soon be answered," she said, as if reading my mind.

Slowly, a head with faded green 'hair' that curved sharply at the back eased its way out of a portal drawn out of thin air, followed by the dainty step of a twiglike porcelain leg, and then by another one draped in the flowing 'dress' indicative of the Gardevoir species.

Once fully emerged, the five foot tall femme Pokemon froze me with an unwavering, very _human_ look in her eyes, and a pleasant smile.

"My name is Pandora."

Along the edges of the portal she had passed through, tiny red flowerbuds began to appear, sprout, grow to maturity, then wither, die and decompose within a matter of seconds.

This, on top of the talking Pokemon who apparently also had a name, and the bizarre dimension I now inexplicably occupied had me stunned beyond words.

_Pandora..._

"Walk with me, Gray," it said to me, then made an elegant swooping gesture with its hands which caused the portal to expand slightly. Enough for two bodies to pass through at once.

She turned to enter it again and, as if compelled by an invisible force, I followed.

"I have no idea...what's going on."

"You should be happy, Gray," the Gardevoir's words resounded and, as I felt her hand clasp over mine, a blinding white glow enveloped everything.

"You have been granted a second chance."

_Where are you taking me?_

With those words the light, the flowery gate, the pink dimension and _Pandora _vanished.

Next thing I knew, I was lying in the grass listening to a flock of chatty Pidgey fluttering through the treetops overhead.

"I'm back in the forest."

Looking around, I could see the bed of overgrowth where my comrades had tended to my wounds, the bloody bullet riddled trees left behind from the fight with Ursaring, where further along sat the same lone clearing by the tree with a Combee hive. The terrain was familiar, but something was distinctly off.

_Why is everything so much bigger now?_

I held out a hand to touch the fronds of an eye-level bush and, instead of my torn wrist or nothing, this time I was shocked to see a smooth and fingerless, rubbery white appendage extending in its place.

_This can't be real_ I thought to myself, butthe strands of green hair hanging over my eyes and two horns protruding from my head - one in the front, one in the back - said otherwise.

By some twist of fate, cruel irony, or what have you, I had become a Ralts.

"You look lost, stranger."

I looked up in the direction of where I thought the voice was coming from, and there I spotted a Metapod nestled on a high branch. I must have missed it upon first glance because of how well it was camouflaged by the surrounding leaves.

_Did that Metapod just...?_

"What's the matter, squirt? Can you not see me from all the way down there?"

"I can understand you?"

He grimaced and glared at me, huffing mad.

"Look, don't think you can just walk all over me because I'll be stuck in this tree until the end of the week," he snapped. "You've got some real nerve, squirt."

"That's seriously not what I meant, guy."

He twitched; trying to look as threatening as an immobile pupal form can attempt, I suppose.

"Oh, take a walk already! How am I gonna do my job if you keep bothering me?"

"Bothering you? You're the one who called out to me in the first place!"

Another set of eyes opened and with them, a second Metapod appeared in the same tree, next to the first one.

"Hey, is this kid bothering you?"

...before I could try to defend myself, another Metapod butted in.

"Pipe it down, would ya? Some of us are stuck working the graveyard shift for crying out loud!"

"Shut your yap and go back to sleep," the first Metapod shouted, but I didn't stick around long enough to hear where the bickering went from there, because my attention was fixed elsewhere.

A furry, light brown figure was kneeling in the grass by the ubiquitous Combee tree.

I didn't know why at the time, but as I watched this figure, memories of my mother I didn't even know I had flooded over me.

She died before I was old enough to really get to know her, so the sadness I felt was less about what was, and more about what might have been: she was the smiling face hanging over the walls of my cradle, or a singing pair of hands holding me up to the sun; excrutiatingly nothing more.

It was like an invisible hand had grabbed me by the neck, and was squeezing all the air out of me.

The figure turned around sharply.

"Are you okay?"

It was a Teddiursa, now running toward me.

"I can't...breathe," I gasped, just before falling facefirst into the grass.


	3. Prologue 3: Born Again, Part 2

The Teddiursa helped me back to my feet as the strange feeling subsided. Before continuing, I would like to make it clear that as far as I can tell Pokemon do not communicate by sound or talking the way humans do. Maybe those squawking Pidgeys earlier were one exception, but who knows.

The way it is for me, it's as easy as thinking about what I want to say and then _projecting_ it outward; an instinct as natural as eating and breathing. Upon reflecting on my encounters with hostile Pokemon as a JDA agent, this seemed to explain how coordinated they can be in a fight. Whereas we humans have to come up with an idea, conjure it up as speech and then react, they get to skip one whole step entirely. It's no wonder I lost an arm, and Len got slammed...

Far from wanting to have one of my limbs for lunch, though, the Teddiursa before me giggled as she lent me a shoulder.

"Whew! It looked like you were gonna faint or drop dead just now."

Probably not as worried as I was - we were two Pokemon hanging out smack dab in the middle of the JDA hunting grid.

I tried to warn her, but the Teddiursa's cheery disposition did not waver in the slightest.

She shot me a perplexed look. Like, 'what are you, nuts?'

"It's okay. Those guys in the tree are keeping watch."

"Those guys? You mean...the Metapod?" I pointed.

"Well, yeah. Duh."

So, the Metapod were acting as sentries? It all kind of made sense. Every Pokemon living in this part of the woods must have known my unit was approaching from a mile away, because the Metapod could see us from their hiding places and immediately warn the others via mindspeak.

So maybe those Pokemon weren't as innocent as I initially thought, I mused; they clearly had the means to ambush us!

Before I could get too riled up over this newly hatched theory, though, Teddiursa tapped me on the shoulder to get my attention.

"What's a Metapod?" she asked curiously. "Or, are you just throwing around a word like that to make yourself sound smart?"

"Sound smart? What exactly are you implying?" I snapped despite myself. "You're the one asking-"

At once mystified by such a basic question, it then hit me that of _course_ Pokemon wouldn't refer to one another by their species, let alone be aware of the names we humans call them by.

I would pick my words more carefully in the future for, even though I had been turned into a Ralts, I was still the enemy.

I was still a human.

...

From there, the Teddiursa offered to take me to the part of the forest where she and the other Pokemon resided, and I accepted.

Was she one of the two Teddiursa from before? I wanted to know, but that's no something I could just casually bring up:

_Hey person I just met, was your mother killed by a bunch of trigger happy humans recently?_

That wouldn't fly.

Furthermore,

Did she have a name, like _Pandora_? And where did Pandora go anyway? Who was her 'master'? And, why did her master feel the need to turn me into a dinky-horned green haired little sheet ghost kid with a head that weighs more than its body?

As I racked my memory for anything clues I might have missed, the Teddiursa and I walked until we reached a small stream, next to which she knelt and deftly used her paws to 'cup' a mouthful of the cool, clean liquid.

"That really hit the spot," she said with a smile after slurping it up.

Upon first glance of my own hands I determined that they were not designed for such a use. So, instead, I clumsily bent over to take a surprisingly tasty drink from the stream.

I would say it was like...drawing in the raw scents of the forest through a straw.

"It's pretty good for water, I guess," I admitted, and she laughed.

"What brings you to this neck of the woods? You're definitely not from around here."

"Is it that obvious?"

"Oh yeah."

By then I already had a goal in mind. Surely it was as good a place to start as any.

"I'm looking for someone special. Her name is Pandora."

"Pandora, huh?" She rubbed her chin in thought. "Only grown-ups have names around here, so that narrows it down a little. Hmm..."

"Grown-ups?"

She hopped up abruptly, and I was so startled that I very nearly fell back into the water.

"Yuda might know! In fact if anyone knows who this Pandora is, Yuda does!" She grabbed me by the arm. "I'll take you to him. After you've had a snooze, of course."

"Do you really think he'd know?"

Just then, I was struck by another 'wave' of emotion. Only this time it wasn't sadness, but an unshakable sense of fear and dread, like freezing cold fingers had dipped into my bloodstream.

I could swear that there was a slight movement in the trees overhead when I looked up, but saw nothing that could account for it.

_This feeling...like we're being watched..._

Whatever it was, I felt that it wanted me to be aware of its presence despite its elusiveness. Silently taunting me? Mocking me? Without a rifle, I was totally powerless.

"Let's go," Teddiursa said as she started pulling me forward. "It's dangerous out here after dark, and we've still got a ways to go to get to the village."

Taking in a deep breath, I steeled myself as we continued on deeper and deeper into the forest until we were well beyond anywhere I've been as a JDA agent.

But whatever _it_ was...it followed us the entire rest of the way, and even though the sun was just beginning to set by the time we arrived at our destination, the fear of what was hiding in the dark never left me until we arrived at a great, moss-covered tree next to a gravelly path, as a light mist and the night were closing in.

"We're here now," Teddiursa announced, motioning to the crumbling ruins of a tower-like structure looming in the distance.


	4. Chapter 1: Ecruteak in Flames, Part 1

"Twenty years ago, Pokemon worldwide were overcome by an unstoppable rage, resulting in the deaths of tens upon thousands of unsuspecting humans. Suddenly, once faithful pets turned on their owners. Best friends were pitted against each other."

A young woman seated in the front row of the makeshift conference hall - the space had once served as the lobby of a bank at one point in its history - listened to the lecture intently.

She looked nothing like your stereotypical soldier being that, at a glance, she was far too young, far too pretty, and her hair far too bright a shade of orange to fit with the loose-fitting JDA uniform she wore.

Nevertheless, whereas many of her classmates were struggling to stay awake, her eyes glimmered in full attention to the special guest lecturer. He was a famous professor that actually hailed from overseas, who was unfortunate enough to have been visiting the Johto region when the Days of Rage struck, thus stranding him.

"Nobody knows why or how it happened, but the cost in human lives has been immense and world-changing. All attempts to escape the region by sea or by air have proven disasterous, as violent Pokemon still lurk above the clouds and beneath the ocean waves, and receiving outside help from other regions is, for similar reasons, a hopeless idea."

Ethel rose her hand.

"What is it this time, Ethel?" The instructor asked robotically.

"Professor Oak, I was wondering if all Pokemon are afflicted with the rage, or just the ones that were alive to experience the incident twenty years ago?"

At this, Professor Gary Oak's eyes widened in surprise.

The same girl had interrupted his lecture several times already but, to her credit, she was a fountain of excellent questions, and this one was no exception.

"It is believed that all Pokemon are afflicted with the Rage," he answered after some thought, "although definitive evidence regarding what the Rage is or how Pokemon contract it has yet to come to light."

"I see. Well, let me rephrase my question," Ethel went on, not content with such an open answer, "what is your personal opinion on the matter of all Pokemon being unstoppable killing machines?"

The Professor froze and looked at her sharply. He clicked the button on the artificial voice box jutting out of his neck with deliberate slowness, then droned on, "it is my personal opinion that a newly hatched Eevee wouldn't hesitate to tear out your trachea if you were to come too close."

...

Ethel Magnus opens her eyes.

The trailer carrying her and a handful of other JDA soldiers has abruptly stopped. Until now she has been reflecting on her first day at the academy, but as the automatic door started to reel open the claustrophobic space is basked in the glow of a full moon, and the intimidating presence of someone standing, hand-on-hip, on the other side.

"We've arrived," the woman greeting them says stiffly once the door is fully open.

Ethel locks eyes with the captain of her platoon.

"Magnus! Is there something in your eye?" The Captain asks sarcastically.

"No, sir."

"Well then, are you feeling sick or something? Because if so, you might as well stay in that trailer and let it take you back home. One weak link is all it takes to bring a unit down."

"I'm fit for battle, ma'am," Ethel growled as she hopped out of the trailer.

"Good. You wouldn't want to end up like your boyfriend now, would you?"

Ethel winces.

Anger wells up within her, for she knows that the Captain was referring to Gray, who had been killed while on duty two weeks ago. They had been close friends and neighbors from a young age, like brother and sister almost, but since then he had been reduced to nothing more than an occasional punchline occasionally uttered by the same Captain present for his brutal demise.

To this day she does not fully understand why he joined the JDA in the first place, but when news of his death reached her she knew there was only one way to avenge him.

"You're asking me if I'm ready for this," she trails off, taking up the rifle that once belonged to Gray and his father, then loads it with a definitive _click_. "Just show me a target and you'll find out."

The Captain grins.

What follows is the kind of perfectly coordinated chaos the JDA specializes in. At the crux of it all are two guys brandishing flamethrowers, situated at either side of a squad of eight soldiers decked out in heavy fireproof, shockproof and freezeproof cutting edge defensive gear.

"Zimmer! Take to the left. Ray, you take the right," the Captain orders, and the men with flamethrowers disperse. "Everyone else follow me and shoot on sight."

So it is that the JDA descend upon the overgrown ruins of Ecruteak City - just one of many human settlements forsaken in the aftermath of the Days of Rage - as the pyro crew goes from building to building setting each one alight with the intention of scaring out any Pokemon cloistered within.

For some inexplicable reason, though, as the night sky is painted in flickering tongues of orange, and the heavy scent of smoke clings to the lower atmosphere, there is not a single Pokemon to be seen. Not a one predictably scurries into the line of fire of the proceeding squadron.

Needless to say, this is a cause of concern for everyone.

Zimmer scowls as he rejoins the unit. "Where could those sneaky runts have run off to?"

"Keep the flames going and your eyes peeled, because they may be up to something," the Captain says. "But we're here to take back Ecruteak and damn it all if we leave here tonight without it."

It is at that moment Ethel notes the shape of the Burned Tower, onetime symbol of Ecruteak's pride, now just a pitiful husk as unremarkable as any of the other abandoned structures, peeking out from beneath the masking cover of rising smoke.

_Hey, let's check the tower._

There used to be two of them, but ironically the other one - despite being fully intact and meticulously well looked after - did not survive into the new age like its handicapped twin.

At the Captain's behest Ethel goes with Ray, one of the pyro guys, to investigate.

The first thing that strikes her as odd is the stench, which prompts her to equip her gas mask.

"It's...foul. Like garbage, but that can only mean-"

Right on cue a Koffing floats forth from the shadows, unleashing a vague smokescreen from the craters marking its rotund purple body as it veers toward them.

"Go, Ethel," the famously quiet Ray says simply. They both know that Koffing gas is highly explosive, so using a flamethrower against it is out of the question.

Ethel moves without hesitation.

She crouches on one knee to duck beneath the gas, and aims her rifle while in a prone position.

"One shot," she mutters, and pulls the trigger.

The bullet lands squarely in the center of the skull and crossbones symbol on the Koffing's chest, and the impact sends it spiralling across the room until it hits a charred black wooden column, where it slinks to the ground in a cloud of displaced dust and its own toxic smog.

"Is that it?" Ethel says, brushing the sweat off her forehead with one hand. "There might be more hiding in the basement."

The 'basement' being the area at the bottom of the deep hole in the middle of the room. It's been there since the floor collapsed during the original fire, from which the tower earned its name.

Ray holds out one of his giant arms to block her before she can go to look.

She leers at him. "What's wrong, Ray?"

"Stay back. This is too easy, and I have a bad feeling."

Ethel would protest, but she had the same feeling since they found out that there were no Pokemon in any of the other buildings. Besides, getting more than five words out of Ray at a time gave her pause.

"Wait, what's that?" She points to the fallen Koffing, its body consumed by a slowly intensifying white glow.

Ray seizes her by the shoulder and throws her out of the way, just before he is swallowed up the catastrophic surge of Koffing's Selfdestruct attack.


End file.
